Editorial: Looking for links, answers on Hershey student housing

A few facts are clear about the recently announced Milton Hershey School student housing expansion.

A few.

View full sizeThe Hershey Co.'s West Hershey Plant on West Chocolate Avenue in Derry Township, Dauphin County, Pa.Dan Gleiter, The Patriot-News, file

In 2005, the Hershey Trust Company issued a press release about its lease agreement with an option to buy the Wren Dale Golf Course on 178 acres in South Hanover Township, Dauphin County. At the time, then President of the Hershey Trust Company Robert Vowler said, "This relationship makes sense for the School and the Trust, and the community can rest assured that this property will remain open space. This will not become another housing development."

Press releases are not facts.

In 2006, the Trust paid $12 million to complete the purchase of Wren Dale.

The land had been assessed in 2002, before the real estate market along the Route 39 corridor exploded, for far less, and Wren Dale was saddled with $7 million in debts.

Former Hershey Company CEO Richard Lenny invested $50,000 in Wren Dale. He was one of of 26 original investors. When the Hershey Trust Company purchased Wren Dale, Lenny sat on its board. The Trust said it did not know Lenny had invested in Wren Dale.

In 2008, according to an article by Patriot-News Reporter Nick Malawskey, the Trust transferred management of the renamed Hershey Links course to Hershey Entertainment & Resorts Company.

In October, 2010, Governor Tom Corbett, then Pennsylvania Attorney General, announced a probe of the Trust regarding its prior acquisitions.

That same month, LeRoy Zimmerman, Chairman of the Trust and Milton Hershey School Board of Managers, issued an open letter in which he wrote, "We purchased [Wren Dale], along with 16 other properties, on the North Campus because we wanted to position the School to serve more students than ever before, and this property was an important piece of a comprehensive plan."

Like military tacticians, real estate developers do not trumpet their ultimate intentions.

Last month, the Milton Hershey School announced Hershey Links will close later this year to make way for the construction of student housing. The two-year probe by the Attorney General's office continues.

The Hershey Trust is a private entity, one answerable only to its chartering documents and the office of the Attorney General of Pennsylvania.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane is the first women and the first Democrat ever elected to the office. She did not receive $765,000 in campaign donations from Eckert Seamans, a Pittsburgh-based law firm which contributed that sum to Corbett's gubernatorial campaign and which, at the time, touted former Attorney General Leroy Zimmerman as its senior counsel.

This editorial board awaits with great interest the resolution of the Attorney General's probe into Hershey Trust Company land acquisitions.